User blog:Deadcoder/Deadcoder's Reviews: Down to Earth
This review is being done at the request of another user, User:Eddieblake. He requested that I review "Down to Earth." Since I'm desperate for readers, here it is. My scoring system is simple: 10 - 0 with 10 being amazing, and 0 being Melanie Tran's acting. My review is, as usual, based on the English dub. =The Review= Down to Earth starts off with Odd commenting about Aelita and Jeremie spending the whole weekend together, and just working; comparing their dry-docked ship with that of Yumi and Ulrich. Aelita comments that Jeremie is a workaholic, and has been completely absorbed with his work, since they found out how wide-spread X.A.N.A.'s replikas were. Frankly, this makes sense. If I found out that an omnicidal possibly-bipolar AI had taken control of half of the TOP500, I would be concerned too. Aelita, being sucidal, isn't concerned "probably because she views it as the lazy way to deal with things." Jeremie announces that he found a way to wipe out X.A.N.A.. His idea is pretty much to use the same system that X.A.N.A. uses. Remembering the Marabounta, Aelita thinks that this idea could be really dangerous. On a side note, Jeremie finds a way to free William, thanks to the previous episode. However, it will be extremely difficult. They decide to go to the factory and try, complete with poorly-translated French joke from Odd. We get a "Clone William is an idiot" moment, with Jim, just to show how much of an idiot he really is. We find out that William's parents are at the school. The whole sub-plot of the Lyoko Warriors hiding William via manipulation and phone calls starts to enter the "Thing Jeremie Invented" state, IE, doomed. We get more "Clone William is an idiot" moments. For unknown reasons, the Lyoko Warriors need the Ice Replika to free William, so they go there, complete with recycled footage. We get more recycled footage, and more "Clone William is an idiot" moments. Followed by recycled footage. Everyone do 3 shots! They arrive at the Ice Replika, and transfer Odd and Aelita to Union Base. This is amusing for an interesting reason. In the previous episode, they gave Union Base's exact coordinates. And if you look at that location in google maps, there really is a base there, as shown by the Code Lyoko Master Map. Yet, for some reason, the sign reads "Union Base" in plain English. Meanwhile at Kadic, we see that William's parents have figured out that the clone is not their son. On top of that, everyone in the room finds out about the lies the Lyoko Warriors had been churning out to cover for William. Yumi and Ulrich are on the Ice Replika, and since they're alone, they talk, hide their feelings, and feel awkward. William shows up. Jeremie notices that X.A.N.A. is gathering the energy of the replikas, and is concerned "again, justified, since the last time that happened, the Kolossus was conceived." At the same time, it turns out that X.A.N.A. has built an army of robots, since he has to do that once per season. The robots attack, with 2d marching animation that I thought was questionable. The robots start shooting at them, and though Odd's shield is holding, they're still advancing. Aelita must do something, so she encounters the Aelita options: :0. Act suicidal and/or crazy. :1. Attack it with a long single note of angry music. :2. Have an argument with it. :3. Use Energy Fields. Based on the fact that they're assuming that something Jeremie made is going to work, she already did 0 this episode. They're not sentient, so 2 is out, and the whole angry note of music isn't powerful, because this is neither Lyoko, nor Glee. That narrows it down to 3, which is a good choice, because several robots are destroyed in one shot. In an homage to season 1, Aelita runs from the thing trying to kill her "Cuz if someone's gonna kill me, it's gonna be me!" and cries from help from Jeremie, in a way that sounds inappropriate without the video. Meanwhile on Lyoko, Ulrich and Wiliam are fighting with swords, with more inappropriate gasping. Now I realize why people like this episode. William disappears into the water, bringing back the Kolossus. The water animation is bad in this shot, since it looks like an inverted oil spill. Yumi being the sane competent one, shows up, and shoots for the Eye of X.A.N.A. on the Kolossus. It doesn't work. They use an incomplete program from Jeremie to delay it, so Jeremie can help Odd and Aelita. Odd holds off the robots, while Aelita writes the program to free William. India, THIS IS HOW YOU SPEED CODE! Odd gets transferred, and Aelita finishes the coding. The Kolossus breaks free. We get more illogical English, since the enter key is labeled exactly that. On a Russian computer. Ulrich is devirtualized, and we get an overly long shot of the kolossus' butt. Aelita gets get enough times that she gets sent back to the skid. William finally gets rematerialized. The Kolossus karate chops the skid, sending it to an edge, and then over. The skid starts to break up and some of the Nav Skids are lost. For whatever reason, the skid blows up before it reaches the digital sea, saving Aelita from deletion. We then get an "Actual William is an idiot" moment, a rarity this season. For some reason, they're able to get odd back as well, never mind that he wasn't on the skid when it was destroyed, and now they don't have anything connecting them to the replika. This could have been fixed with one line of dialog. ONE! but they don't. Since we must have a scene with sissi being both smart and dumb, she shows up at her father's office, explaining that even she's noticed William's odd behavior, and points out that it only started when he started hanging out with Jeremie's group. She then compensates for this intelligence by calling a guinea pig a mini pig. We then get this hilarious look into Sissi's mind: "Of course I'm sure! After all, I'm your daughter, so I'm always right." This next scene is what, in my opinion, made me lose respect for the Warriors, but not the show. Jeremie and Aelita deactivate the William Clone program, and replace him with the real one. TWO PEOPLE CASUALLY KILL SOMEONE THAT THEY CREATED, SIMPLY BECAUSE IT WAS CONVENIENT! Now I get that this show is set in France, where killing someone who shows signs of a Pervasive Developmental Disorder is completely socially acceptable. But that social horror only applies to medical malpractice, not filicide. Also, you could claim that it was just an program, not a person; except this program could think; have empathy; and despite being fundamentally logical, could be stupid. Aelita had the same traits, yet they tried to protect her. But with clone william, they murdered him with the amount of thought and emotion that they use to operate the dysfunctional drink machine on the school grounds. EVEN AELITA DOESN'T CARE! Having witnessed William disappear, Jim freaks out, and the real William shows up. William dismisses the whole thing, and true to mental illness in France, his utterly idiot phase is ignored. Odd casually comments that the clone will be missed, since he was more fun. You should have thought of that before you were an accessory to murder, Odd. They discuss everything that's happened, including the lost skid, X.A.N.A.'s army of robots, and the creation of Jeremie's program. Review Summary Personally, I kind of liked the Kolossus. Code Lyoko started with a case of "Attack of the 50 foot whatever." Looking back on it, I think it was poetic to end the series with that too. We had some good Sissi moments, a decent fight scene, Drama without the midair-halting laser beam, and two people murdering what was effectively their child. Overall rating: 2.5 / 10. This was an average episode, with a lot of recycled plot elements, such as giant thing attack, robots, narrowly avoiding discovery, etc. This would have warranted an average 5, but I frown on parents murdering their children, AI or otherwise, so Jeremie and Aelita each deducted a point from the episode for what is a death penalty crime in some countries, and the whole thing where Odd survived, without any mention, knocked off another point. Category:Blog posts Category:Down to Earth